


the absence of snow

by acidicrainbow



Category: A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 17:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20457029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidicrainbow/pseuds/acidicrainbow
Summary: "The girl of sunlight and cotton and paper lantern’s heart belonged to Allan, but Allan’s heart belonged to someone else. A boy made of poetry, stars, and darkness."a reflection on the life and death of Allan Grey.





	the absence of snow

When the cotton swirled in the air like snow, something Allan would never experience, he kissed a girl who was madly in love with him. _This is what my family wants from me._ Allan thought. Then, his following thought: _This is most definitely not what I want for myself. _

He saw the girl as much as possible. Her name was Blanche, as white as the falling cotton she had fallen in love with him under. Her eyes shone like paper lanterns- dim and warm, with her youth revealed under manufactured lights. Sunshine illuminated her face. Blanche hadn’t yet learned what it meant to lose something of hers. Allan wondered about when he died, how long it would take Blanche to realize that he never really was hers to lose. 

The girl of sunlight and cotton and paper lantern’s heart belonged to Allan, but Allan’s heart belonged to someone else. A boy made of poetry, stars, and darkness. Allan spoke his name with the highest of reverence. James. Allan spoke it over and over, while something inside him burned. This firey feeling would tear Allan apart one day, become his undoing. Allan, knowing this, poured whiskey on the fire.

_Who could ever own a heart?_ Allan wrote late at night, while the boy slept in his lap. _My heart is a body part, essential to my survival. Yet, when I see you it beats faster. When my hands reach for yours, I know. I know you are a part of my body, even when you’re no longer with me. I know I need you. My love, you are essential to my survival. You own me._

The next morning, Allan snuck out of James’ room to see Blanche. He gave her the writing, and she gushed over it like always. Then they kissed, while the sun scalded him. Sunlight always felt like punishment for what he got up to in the darkness.

James left the year after. Allan threw himself into Blanche, hoping that if he faked it for long enough his love might become real.

He drove all the way to the city and bought her a paper lantern for her birthday. Hand in hand, they walked to the lake. Allan placed a candle in the paper lantern and let Blanche set it afloat on the lake. He took out his second present, one he had bought for the both of them.

He asked the girl of daylight and cotton to marry him. To run off to where their families couldn’t stop them just long enough for a marriage certificate. Freedom for him, security for her. 

There was no ceremony, just a quick signing of paper. After, he pretended his girl of fire was the boy who was far away. 

Legally, Allan and Blanche Grey had joined hands in marriage. However he tried to change, though, Allan’s hands were bound to James. Allan wrote poem after poem about the boy he loved in the dark. Blanche loved these poems, sealing them in envelopes and keeping them tucked away. She loved him, when he never could manage to love her.

Two summers later. Two painful summers where Allan convinced himself that Blanche and him were in love. That the girl of light could move his heart how the boy of darkness had. When James came back after two years, Allan remembered. Allan remembered the way a heart in love beats, the way the world spins differently and days pass in a blur for the boy he shouldn’t love. He spent his nights ‘playing poker’ and ‘hanging out with the guys.’ Poems flew out faster and faster, until every room in the house Blanche and Allan shared was coated in paper. It littered every surface, like a fresh covering of snow. It’s a shame, really, that Allan never got to see snow.

Allan would have loved snow. Looking up, seeing it falling from the sky like stars. The same kind of stars he fell in love with James under. Maybe if things were different, if something else went down that night- maybe then, Allan would see snow. Maybe then he could fall in love, and be happy, and live a life during the day too. 

This did not happen. What happened is this; Allan Grey and James Puller were found in bed together by his wife. They were all drunk, all moving too fast. Moving away, to the casino, where Allan danced his last dance. Under the harsh glare of the artificial lighting, the sun in his life informed him of what she thought of him.

“You disgust me.”

This is where Allan Grey’s life stops. With the absence of snow and robbed of a final goodbye to his first and only love. Allan truly stopped living when he understood what would come next.

Blanche would talk. Tell everyone about James, and then the witch hunt would begin. His man of stars and nights and stolen kisses and love, his everything would shatter. A lantern, shining off of the lake, burst all the darkness inside Allan.

It’s little comfort, but Allan died looking at the stars. The darkness that had filled Allan since he first laid eyes on James engulfed him one last time, as he laid himself to rest.

James was the first person to see his body, and the only person who understood the meaning of Allan’s sacrifice. James was the one to shield Blanche’s eyes. James comforted her afterwards, but left as soon as he could. 

For years afterward, James wished he were dead. He knew it was selfish, but he wished that he had thought of shooting himself before Allan had. Still, somehow, James lived.  
James obsessed over the fragments of Allan’s poems he’d stolen from Blanche. Not stealing. James didn’t consider it stealing. The poems belonged to him, truly, even if Blanche still didn’t understand that.

Writing always reminded him of Allan. Painful and gut wrenching, James stumbled over every clumsy attempt to make the words move like Allan had. Until he stumbled on the solution, a decade later at Allan’s grave. James told Allan about their happiest moments through tears.

That is what he wrote about. The good times he had, not the hollowing sorrow he felt. The poetry sustained him when everything else left. It took him everywhere, to places with things that Allan would never get to see- snow and gay bars and flags and other people like them.

James lived. Through Allan’s death and later, the death of every man he called his friend. He had already outlived the man he loved the most, Allan Grey, and on June 5th, 2004, James outlived the man he hated the most, Ronald Reagan. It was a life of loss and poetry and darkness, but it was also a life of pride and community and hope.

He died of old age, in a care facility garden. James begged his attendant to let him in the garden at night, so when he died it would be under the stars, just like Allan. When James’ breath became ragged, his insides rebelling at the years they could not contain, he let out one final breath directed at the darkness. His last view was of foggy stars, changed since his youth, but still intact in their place in the sky.

Two boys of darkness found the stars inside each other and didn’t let them go. There’s always a story of darkness within a story of light, and stories within the stories until there can no longer be darkness or light, just existence. Two boys lived. Two boys died. What else is there to be told?

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> wow i really hate what a streetcar named desire did to allan grey. idk if i should've added that stuff about james at the end but i wrote this to stop myself from crying about literally everything in the play. pls like comment and subscribe.


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